How to do everything

Transcript:

Hey. We’re almost through the day.

It’s been amazing. I’ve been in awe of all of the speakers. And, of course, coming at the end of the session, I’m like, oh, sh*t.

What am I going to do now?

But I’m not competitive, and I’m really cool with who I am and what I can do. So, today, I would, first of all, like to thank Holly for giving me that introduction because I was going to do it myself, and now I don’t have to. So I don’t have to big myself up. You can see that I do loads of things. I’m really impressive.

I was just going to talk about some of my hobbies to to spread that out a bit. So, I took a bit of a break for 18 months and explored everything I wanted to do in my life, and that included adding writing to my, what do you call it, genres? I don’t know, like, all of the different things that I do.

So I am taking this very intensive method writing course that makes me bleed onto the page on a regular basis. I tried pottery for a while and decided that I will come back to pottery when I have more time to dedicate to it. I’m also in a book group because they’re my family.

I don’t actually like all the members of my book group, but I love them, and it’s really great to have those people when you’re an expat.

I force myself to do exercise, and I also somehow fit in, almost every week, maintenance therapy.

So I don’t need therapy anymore, but I definitely need maintenance therapy, so I don’t need to go back to it.

So the question is, how do I fit all of this in? And I’m afraid that if you’re hoping I’m gonna tell you about, like, all of my AI hacks and how to automate my life, that that is not today’s discussion.

I do love doing those things. And if anybody has some really cool tools they wanna share with me and wanna hear about my tools, we can do that afterwards. What I thought I’d do instead today was talk about, why do I do all of these things and also some of the guiding principles behind it. And so I just took a little bit of time to extrapolate what have I learned that means that I can have a very full life and enjoy the very full life that I have rather than running around, freaking out, being late for everything, and stressed because then, like, what’s the point of that?

So the question is, why do I do so much?

And it’s because I’m impatient and because I love life, and I have loads of curiosity, and I love connecting with people. So I just have to thank Simon for talking about curiosity today, Niamh for impatience because, like, everything Niamh said, I was, like, a hundred percent there with you, and then also Janet with just the connections that you get from empathy and being vulnerable.

All of those speeches just really touched me, and I feel like maybe we planned this in a way where it all coalesces, which is great. So the reason why I do as much as I do is we only have one life. And I have had probably more death than a lot of people have dealt with at the age that I am. I’ve lost all of my grandparents. I’ve lost my father, my mother, my stepmother.

I’m going to be going to my fourth funeral this year. And part of that is because I live a really rich life, and I have loads of friends and family, and therefore, I the consequence of loving as many people as I do means that I’m naturally going to lose people in my life. But they’ve also given me such a gift, which is to appreciate my life so much more than I would have if I hadn’t had to walk through the amount of grief that I’ve walked through.

And so I contemplate death on a daily basis, but not in a way that makes me really afraid. Sometimes it does, and I’m like, Woah. Okay. No.

No. Let’s go to the positives here. But I think about it’s only one life, and I’m going to be this weary Mary here. Fuck everybody else.

I’m going to live the life that I want to live because of that.

And then, on top of that, I really love contrarian thinkers, and I read an article in the Feet weekend magazine, I don’t know, maybe six months ago, and it was by a journalist called Markham Hyde, and the article was called The Life Ruining Power of Routine.

I have to read that because I am not a fan of of, atomic habits. I hate routine, and I hate being told what to do, and I hate feeling guilty about not doing everything that I’m supposed to do. And so I was like, this is the article I have to read. And then slight plug for my podcast, I then interviewed him. So if you’d like to hear the full interview, check out the operations room, and you can hear Markham talk about it.

So one of the points that he made is that if we do routine, we actually stop remembering it because our brains don’t want to waste the calories writing down, woke up, went to the gym, had breakfast, drove to work. And so if you have in a life that is massively full of routine and doing the same things all the time, you don’t remember it.

And I want to have a long and full life, and I want to remember the long and full life that I’ve had.

And so I want to do lots of different things so that my life is a memorable one to me. Maybe to you as well. We’ll see.

But I also want to have a balanced and fulfilled and fun life.

And so I’ve done a lot of work on, I call it embodiment body psychotherapy.

Like, we talk about our mind and our body being separate, but really, they’re very interconnected because, like, our our brain is in our body, even though we like to pretend it’s not.

And so I’ve done some reading from a woman called Babette Rothschild, and she’s a body psychotherapist. And she talks about in order to have an integrated and fulfilled life, you need to have these five buckets, if she has a better word for it, in your life. One is it’s just like variation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So one is the practical, like, do you have enough money that you have shelter and you can have food because otherwise, nothing else.

You know, we don’t have enough free time to think about the rest. And then there’s the physical. Do we have a healthy body? Are we enjoying our body?

Psychological, which is both, like, today’s World Mental Health Day, so do we have a mentally healthy body? But also for me, that requires intellectual stimulation. I have a brain that needs to be occupied because then maybe I don’t have such great mental health if I don’t occupy it.

The interpersonal and all of those relationships, I don’t know about you, but for me, the best times, the most memorable times in my life are when I’m working with other people, and I really, really want to do more of that, and then the spiritual.

And I focus on all five of those, and I meaningfully choose how much time I’m going to spend in those buckets.

And it doesn’t mean that I’m spending twenty percent of my time and energy in each of them because there’s different seasons of my life, like when I was raising children. I mean, I still am, but they’re teenagers, so they don’t think I am.

I did not have a lot of time for the physical I mean, the psychological. Like, I you know, most of it was just staying alive, working, and keeping children alive. But now I and I just had another season in my life where I spent eighteen months just exploring everything and loving it all, and now I’ve just entered a new one coming into peak and back to full time life. But as you can see, I am absolutely determined to hold on to the buck those buckets that I want to. And so what I would like to challenge you to think about today is, given the season of your life, which buckets would you like to pour more time and energy into?

Just gonna give you a couple of seconds to reflect on it. It’s not a Q and A, but I suspect there are probably a couple of moments and ideas that just pop into your mind.

And I’d like to suggest that maybe you go for it and figure out how you add them into your life.

So then, I’ve talked about the why, and now, on to the how. And for me, this falls broadly into three categories. It’s about upholding my boundaries, but I can’t uphold those boundaries without self confidence.

And it’s about not that there isn’t stress and worry in my life, but I have actively chosen to not be stressed and to let go of worry.

And so what I want to talk to you about is to share some of my observations on how I have sometimes managed to achieve these things. I’m not perfect. There are moments when I have definitely not achieved them, yesterday, you know, today, freaking out about this conversation and topic. So the first one is boundaries. I know it sounds a bit psychobabble, but, really, what I just mean is giving myself the permission to say yes to the things that I want to do and giving myself permission to say no to the things that I don’t want to do. And sometimes, I also kind of want to do things, but know that if I say yes, I can’t do something else. And sometimes, I think I want to say yes because I feel really guilty, and I don’t want those guilty feelings.

And then I have to give myself permission to still say no, because that’s really what I want, and let the guilt go. Because that guilt is just my reflection of what I should be doing for somebody else, and as soon as the word should comes in, I know that I’m worrying about other people’s feelings and not my own. And if we reflect back to one life to live, my feelings are the only feelings that are most important to me.

What I also do is I regularly evaluate what I’m doing, and if I’m really enjoying it, I keep doing it. And if I’m not enjoying it anymore, or it’s not satisfying and fulfilling, I give my myself permission to walk away. So just because I’ve decided to commit to something doesn’t mean I have to commit to it forever. Pottery is the most recent victim to, not committing anymore.

You’ll be happy to know my husband is still something I am committing to.

And I know that I am a better leader because I make time for therapy, and creativity, and fun in my life.

And that really helps me say yes and no to the things I want to say yes and no to because that is what matters to me.

And so my next question to you is, what would make you a better leader if you made more time for it in your life?

Again, I’ll give you a couple of minutes to reflect on that, or a couple of seconds, and another one that you might want to continue to ponder after this conversation.

I don’t know who that was, but somebody just took a really big, centering breath. That’s something I do all the time: fall into myself, feel what I’m feeling, and make decisions from there.

So, the thing with boundaries is it’s really hard to do that without self confidence and self trust because you have to be okay disappointing other people. You have to be okay not saying yes to every opportunity, and you have to be okay trusting that what you’re going to do or what I’m going to do is the right thing for me.

And I’ve been able to do that through a tremendous amount of work.

I am not a naturally confident person. I have moments where I might look like I am, but not to bore everybody with my childhood of trauma. Again, if you’re interested, we can talk about that afterwards. We can swap some childhood trauma stories. But I came to adulthood with a very empty core.

I cried very easily. I had to be an absolute perfectionist.

My very first three sixty review as an exec had a bunch of different criteria and was scored out of five, and five was, like, impossible to get, and three is okay.

And I was already pretty stressed about a three sixty review with my old boss and my new boss, and one of the, I don’t know, third or fourth criteria was commercial acumen, and I had scored a three.

And I was already freaking out that it didn’t have fives across the other ones so far, and the three just floored me, and the tears came. I was like, Okay. No tears, no tears. But, you know and they’re going, Do you need a break? I’m like, No. I’m fine. Tears pouring out, and it was just because I wasn’t perfect.

I still think I probably deserve more than a three for commercial acumen, but, you know, whatever. I’m I’ve gotten over it.

And but what that’s given me is a time to reflect on those moments of adversity and actually realize that I’ve built a tremendous amount of resilience from it.

There were times in my life where I didn’t have enough money to eat. I remember walking down the street and looking at McDonald’s and just being like, Oh, when I get money again, I’m going to eat McDonald’s every single day. That’s just amazing.

And now but what I can also reflect about in those times is I was still me.

I still had my brain, I still had my thoughts, and I know that I got through that, and so I’m just not afraid of losing everything. Like, I’m really lucky. I, you know, have a nice house, I have a nice family, but if I lost everything tomorrow, I could do it again.

And that gives me a tremendous amount of confidence to just get on with it, try things, take risks, explore, live my life.

That also means that I try not to compare myself to others. Obviously, I do because, you know, everybody else’s speeches were amazing today.

But I try really hard, and I’m more aware that I do it than I used to be.

And I am not the tallest, I am not the thinnest, I am not the prettiest, I am not the richest, I am not the most successful.

I haven’t achieved the most at the youngest age. I’m not the youngest in general. You can see where my brain goes. But I’m I’m me, and my collection of awesomeness and the way that my cells have come together means that I’m incredibly lucky. I’m incredibly lucky to be here. I’m incredibly lucky to have the connections that I make with other people.

And I don’t need to be the thinnest or the tallest or the prettiest in order to do that.

And I just have to keep reminding myself that that is what it’s about.

And then finally, this is interesting because Niamh talked about this as well, I trust that living the life that I want to lead will give me good things and will lead to good things because it has so far, so I have actual empirical evidence.

When I come to making decisions now, I tap into my curiosity and my energy.

And if I feel that pull and that life force, I’m like, Yeah. I’m gonna do it. You know? And I could dither, and I could worry, and I could decide, Is it logical? Is it not logical?

But just being able to follow, Yes. That’s what I want to do next, has always led to good things and has actually created the career that I’ve had.

So this is just, like, a a top tip for any of those out there who struggle with self esteem issues.

And this is something that I did quite a bit. I used to journal, and there was, like, a format in the journal of, like, what are the best things that happened today? What have I achieved? And if there were any particularly good ones, I would jot them down. And now I have my crisis log. So whenever I’m in a real spiral, I go and read that, and I remind myself of the things that I’m great at.

And so I would really suggest, when you’re feeling good, when you’re on top of the world, write down all of the things that make you awesome. And then on those days when you don’t feel great, return back to that. Just giving yourself, like, a little hug and a and a bit of perseverance because you’re awesome. We’re all awesome. And we just need to figure out and remind ourselves about it.

So, now, on to letting go of stress and worry. This is, first of all, really, really hard for me and the one that I’ve most recently started to crack.

I was in a workshop, and somebody was talking and said that stress is what happens when what you want doesn’t match reality.

And it was just like a profound moment for me. I was like, Oh my god. That is exactly what it is. And that then ties into me for the serenity prayer of, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

And although I am not an alcoholic, I just love the serenity prayer. I’m always amazed that it’s not in the Bible, that it’s so recent, but it’s, to me, just so profoundly true. And so when I’m starting to feel that anxiety or the stress come up, I just can short circuit it and go, Okay.

My desire and reality are not matching.

Can I change it?

Yes? Okay. Cool. How do I solve it? No?

How am I going to get over it?

And then the stress goes away because either I’m focusing on how I’m going to accept it, or I’m focusing on how I’m going to change it.

And then this all so this works for all kinds of stress, like people’s expectations, which used to be a really big stressor for me. So now I’m like, That’s their problem.

That’s not my problem if I’m not meeting their expectations because I’m meeting my own expectations.

It works for meeting clashes, it works for trains that are late, and it’ll even work for bigger issues like money problems. Like, for me, money problems is a problem you can solve. You just might have to think about it in a different way.

And then stress is acute worry, and worry is, like, chronic anxiety, and, really, it’s the same thing. So if you’re dealing with worry, you, I think about it the same way. Is is this a problem I can solve?

And I and putting my attention onto something in the future now means that I’m not gonna have problems later, like paying my taxes, Or is this something that me worrying about doesn’t make any difference at all because whatever’s gonna happen is going to happen, like my son’s launching into the world?

You know? There’s no point spending huge amounts of time worrying about whether or not they’re gonna come back home because maybe they will, maybe they won’t.

And another quote that I’ve had many people attribute this quote, so I’m not gonna give it to any credit to anybody, but I really like it is worrying is like praying for what you don’t want to happen.

So why do it?

Just figure out, is it something I can change, or is it something I need to let go of? Which leads me on to my next and final question, is what is one thing you’re currently worrying about that you can let go of? Because worrying about it is not gonna change the outcome.

And again, I suspect there’s something that’s just popped into your mind.

Let it go.

So, to answer the question of how I do everything, I’m really clear on what everything means, what I want, and why I want it.

I have the confidence to ask for what I want, and I’m also willing to walk away from what I don’t want.

Because I think we always think about what we do want, but we have to think about what we don’t.

And by getting rid of the clutter and stress of all of this worry, it gives me the space and the energy to figure out how I want to allocate my time, and how I can do what I want to do with joy and laughter.

I have one bonus tip: I forgive myself. I forgive myself when I fall into stress, when I’m too tired to exercise, when I have to cancel a trip with my friends, which I had to do recently because I was exhausted, when I compare myself to others, when I forget about what I want, when I have a bout of anxiety, when I’m late for a meeting, when I miss a deadline, when I disappoint my children.

And I forgive myself because I’m a human, and human being human means making mistakes.

I’m not perfect, and I am like everyone else because none of us are.

And so all of our struggles, all of our foibles, and all of our failures are what unite us, and it’s through being united that we become great leaders.

Thank you.